Charlottesville has officially ended its use of the Flock camera system that photographs and uses artificial intelligence to track license plates of cars moving around the city for law enforcement use.
The City ended its contract with the company after the one-year pilot program expired — and City Manager Sam Sanders says it won’t be renewed.
“That pilot has now ended,” Sanders told the City Council at its Monday, Dec. 15 meeting. “The cameras are being removed.”
The decision was made due to concerns over how other local, state and the federal government might use the data Charlottesville collected, which it had originally shared widely with other agencies around the state, Sanders said.
Though Sanders didn’t mention it during the meeting, city leaders have previously expressed concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accessing the data. Police Chief Michael Kochis said in June that the Charlottesville Police Department disconnected its Flock system from other law enforcement agencies, citing similar concerns, according to a report from CBS19 News.
However, the City will continue discussing the technology, which is becoming increasingly popular in cities around the country. In Charlottesville, the local police reported success in apprehending people suspected of crimes using the license plate readers. (Read more about that in this newsletter from February.)
“There has been a request for a technology work session, so that we can dig into how systems like this and other things are becoming a part of the normal use in law enforcement activity around the country,” Sanders said. “And we need to have more discussions about that.”
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